


January In Paris

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Developing Friendships, Paris is saved!, Ridiculous sparky adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-11 05:03:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Alternate universe. Not long after fourteen-year-old Agatha Clay moves to Paris with her parents, her classmate Colette tries to figure her out - and is hijacked by a natural experiment.





	January In Paris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Para](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Para/gifts).



> For Para for spark_exchange 2017. Hope you enjoy! I had a lot of fun with your prompts, even if I didn't manage to hit them quite right - may quantity make up for quality.

\--

Colette had noticed Agatha Clay right away, of course. She was younger than most of the students, watched their lecturer with a worrying intensity instead of taking more than cursory notes, and there was something about how she scowled when he got something wrong - two point two times an hour on average, it was past time he got a new memory drum - that suggested she only kept quiet because someone, at some vulnerable point, had told her it was rude to contradict her teachers. Colette had never been told that; Papa had made it clear, from the time she began to have tutors instead of being left in the care of her brother Louis to absorb the essentials, that if she disagreed with her teachers, the next step was to _prove_ them wrong. It was a delicate balance, finding tutors who would respect a girl of six enough to let her try while not being so afraid of the Master of Paris's daughter they would never contradict her back, but Papa had made the effort. Eventually, when she started to attend group classes, Papa instructed her to hold her tongue and keep notes: when her teachers were wrong, and who _else_ had the wit and courage to protest. Such students were worth watching, he said. Colette thought Agatha Clay might be worth watching.

But Agatha Clay only sat there. When their lecturer began to give an entirely incorrect account of the Reynaud-Mercier process, she sat there with a face like a boiler with a broken pressure valve, slowly edging toward an explosion. It was intolerable. Something had to be done. 

Colette palmed the radio transmitter from her coat pocket, and began to fiddle with the dials without looking. 

Their lecturer's voice went high-pitched and crackly for a second, which got everyone's attention and a few muffled chuckles. Then it settled back to its usual register and continued, "And as the temperature increases, you will see clearly that I am a duck."

This was harder than it looked at speed. Colette took a deep breath, as the other students looked around in confusion. 

"I am a duck swimming softly down the Seine, and every day I hunt for bugs and then go home again," the lecturer went on. This was one of several problems with using clank teachers, and Colette had planned for all of them to happen this semester, but not so early as January. Still, needs must. "Sometimes little children stop and throw me bread, but it swells up in my belly and explodes and makes me dead. Then the good Master has to bring me back with lightning, and I grow pointy teeth and I'm very very frightening." Colette's fingers were getting tired. She yanked at the knob once more, hoping she remembered the frequencies correctly. "A splendid example of the Petrarchan sonnet form. Now, by the eighteenth century sonnets had fallen out of fashion -"

Their lecturer continued giving the poetry lecture from three buildings over as most of the class looked confused or horrified. Agatha Clay, though, had her hands clasped over her mouth, barely holding in her laughter. Colette felt a warm glow of satisfaction.

It took most of a minute before a rotund boy Colette had to think to remember was named Michel Bradok stood up and cleared his throat loudly. "Look, everyone, I think our lecturer's broken," he said, for the benefit of the students who'd mastered sleeping with their eyes open. "I'll go tell the departmental secretary, why don't you all clear out since class was almost over?"

That got their attention. Students were amazingly predictable.

Colette managed to catch Agatha in the hallway outside, and gave her best beaming smile. "You don't have another class today, do you?" She didn't or Colette wouldn't have asked; the student schedules weren't even kept in locked filing cabinets. "Fancy some cocoa before you go home? The weather is absolutely frightful, isn't it?"

\--

Twenty minutes later, and Agatha was in the Cafe du Chat Bleu with her cold hands wrapped around a mug of cocoa, trying to figure out how she attracted the attention of the _daughter_ of the _Master of Paris_. Colette had begun by mentioning a group project, but then detoured into a long anecdote about two boys - she made the word sound like 'infants', or possibly 'mimmoths' - who had competed to work on a acoustics project with her with such enthusiasm they'd almost blown up a greenhouse. "Of course, it all worked out," she confided. "I told Delacruz they were so eager, perhaps they should be working together, and she thought it was a _splendid_ idea. Frederic was so embarrassed; he'd primed the test multiphaser with a love song and forgot to change it."

For the second time that day, Agatha found herself struggling not to laugh out loud. It hadn't been a struggle once; the everpresent headaches had made that much emotion painful. But she had her last headache on the train to Paris, and now Agatha suspected she could feel whatever she wanted. She could even scream in righteous fury, if the occasion warranted. She hadn't needed to. For most of a month now Paris had only been wonderful.

"Let it out, chérie, it was just as bad as you're imagining," Colette told her with a smirk. Agatha gave up, and muffled her hoots in her sleeve. Nobody gave them disapproving looks for the noise; two professors were having a screaming argument in German about whether the Anabaptist Alchemical Army should be counted in the list of crusades, someone was practicing playing wineglasses on their tablemates' teacups while the tablemates tried to stop them, the rain had gotten so loud against the windows everyone inside had to raise their voices from that alone, and a clank was exploding through the floor.

Agatha stared at it. It was three meters tall, with circular-saw devices mounted over its shoulders and shears for hands, and plated a very nice peacock blue where it wasn't covered in sawdust. Which was not to say the overall design looked tasteful. 

"Attention, fragile human citizens!" the clank announced. "Cooperate and your lives will be spared!"

Tasteless, awkward design, _and_ they left obvious gaps in the armour plating. Agatha threw the sugar bowl at it.

It didn't do anything the sawdust didn't, she hadn't really expected it to, but it did get the thing's attention. The clank turned toward them with a horrible grinding noise. "Who dares interfere with the inevitable conquest of Julius Ornthrub?" 

Colette had folded her arms and was glaring at the clank as if it had done her personal injury - fair enough; they'd been having a nice friendly chat and there was probably sawdust in her cocoa now. "Seriously? The inevitable conquest? You were _expelled!_ Most people would take the opportunity and the _clue_ to move out of Paris!" 

"The foolish faculty will be ground beneath my heel, and then _ground into tiny pieces!_ All shall tremble and despair - "

He must be running the clank remotely, Agatha concluded, that was too relevant an answer for a clank voicebox - at least from someone who built clanks this shoddy. Well, let him rant, it just gave the other customers time to flee, and Agatha time to work. She grabbed the parts of the thing she'd been tinkering with from her satchel, and hastily slid them together. 

"Alright, but what do you actually want?" Colette exclaimed, still glaring at the clank. "It's not as if you can take over Paris with one clank! Papa wouldn't stand for it!"

"Ah, but what will he say when I have his lovely daughter - "

Agatha fired the electric stunner at the vulnerable joint of the thing's neck. It crackled, and the peacock-blue coating flared up with a hiss. The clank had time to raise its arms before there was a nasty pop, a sudden flash, and it went still in mid-motion, signals cut off. 

"Very nicely done, chérie," Colette said, and clapped a companionable hand on her shoulder.

At this point, the floor collapsed.

\--

"I am _so sorry_ ," Colette told her for the third time. "These imbeciles don't normally have the _wit_ to take hostages."

At least, Agatha repeated to herself, they weren't in a dank dungeon somewhere. They were in fact in a nicely appointed boudoir, which was only marred by its failure to contain any tools they could use to blow the door open. It did have a velvet couch, and Agatha was comforting herself with the petty revenge of planting her damp, muddy shoes all over it. Colette was pacing. "Do you get people taking over Paris often?" Agatha asked, because if they were talking she couldn't spend too much brainpower worrying.

"Oh, someone comes up with a harebrained scheme every month or two. Papa has people to keep an eye on them." Colette ran her hands through her hair, a careless and eye-catching gesture. "Some of the students like to thwart them. There's a club - a sort of friendly competition. You might like to join, in fact, you were doing very well until they came up through the floor. They must have made such a mess of the cellars," she added mournfully. "Monsieur Bonavante will have a conniption."

There was a club? "I don't think my mother would approve," Agatha ventured. 

"Old-fashioned, is she?"

"Well, it's more like overprotective." Some of Lilith's rules were odd - the one about coffee, for example, and the one about never having two books open at once - but they were never about propriety, exactly. "She'd probably say to leave dealing with criminals to the city guards. Are the guards going to turn up here, do you think?"

"They'd have to find the place first." Colette dusted off her hands with an oddly deliberate air. "It will probably be faster to wait for Ornthrub to come back to gloat. You aren't a trained fighter, are you?"

"Only a little self-defense." Lilith hadn't wanted to risk exercise making the headaches worse, and forbid Agatha anything more strenuous than ballroom dances or walking home with groceries. Maybe she should learn savate. "I could be a distraction?"

"Wait until he distracts himself gloating," Colette suggested, "and then it will be two against one. But do let him talk first. Papa will be annoyed if we don't work out who his collaborators were."

"We?" Agatha blinked. "We're his hostages!"

"Or to put it another way, chérie, agents who have gained entrance to his stronghold. Why waste a chance like this?"

"Because we'd like to _leave_ his stronghold in one living piece each?" 

Colette snorted. "Ornthrub could only kill us by accident. He doesn't have the mindset."

Well, she should know; she had recognized the clank. Recognized it, furthermore, as the work of an ex-student who left under a cloud. What must that have taken at the Institut de la Extrordinaire? A boy in her Nonexplosive Metallurgy study group had spent half an hour of their first session complaining of the unfairness of having to take it over, just because his midterm project last semester had produced a cloud of sulfur dioxide that sent five students to the hospital. He hadn't, after all, blown anything up. At Transylvania Polygnostic he would at least have wound up on academic probation for that stunt, and possibly even been asked to change his major. 

Her burst of contempt apparently exhausted, Colette was leaning against the door, head thrown back like she was listening for something. Agatha didn't want to interrupt her. She sank into the sofa and watched through half-closed eyes. Colette was taller than she was, and added to it with stack-heeled boots and an air of effortless superiority. She wore spring colors in winter. Boys would be slavering at her feet no matter whose daughter she was. The net result was to make Agatha feel very small and awkward and fourteen, and even more confused why Colette had been so insistent on making her acquaintance.

She had enjoyed the cocoa date, though, right up until they were attacked. If she were being completely honest with herself Agatha had to admit the chance to try out her electric stunner had been fun. And right now she was having no fun at all, but when Ornthrub turned up again, she might get the chance to take all his clanks apart and blow up his secret headquarters, which would be _very very fun -_

"Is that a Romanian folktune?"

"Hm?"

"That you were humming," Colette explained. "I don't recognize the tune." She strolled over to the sofa and perched on the arm, eyebrow raised.

"Sorry, I do that sometimes, I don't always notice -"

As if on cue, the doorknob clicked. They both went tense as it swung slowly open to reveal another peacock-blue clank.

"My illustrious master demands your presence, fragirrrrrrreeeeeeeeshshshkkhonored guests," the clank announced. "Follow me."

Maybe he was good at clank voices, just, well, not quite perfect.

\--

Julius Ornthrub was lanky, brown-haired, and wore goggles with round peacock-blue lenses. Also, peacock-blue gloves. A theme, Agatha thought. She was maybe getting a little hysterical. Her parents would be wondering why she hadn't turned up for dinner.

Although apparently she was going to get dinner, because Ornthrub was sitting at a table laid out with - mostly bread rolls, piled on multicolored napkins. A soup tureen. The rolls looked burnt and not properly risen. It was obviously a gesture in the direction of 'fancy dinner' made by someone who couldn't actually cook, and Agatha felt a pang of sympathy that quickly turned into annoyance as he waved at the other seats and announced, "I will be merciful! Take sustenance!" Really, who talked like that? He snapped his fingers, and pointed imperiously at an apparently random spot on the tablecloth.

Colette looked around curiously before she sat. "It's not very much of a lab, is it?" A clank rolled up to her elbow and held out a wineglass; she took it without looking.

"Insolence! My lab is through those doors." He pointed. "This is merely an annex for entertaining guests."

"And the tables with all the gears and tools?" Colette raised an eyebrow. 

"Creativity cannot be contained!" He snapped his fingers again. 

Agatha nibbled at a roll. It didn't taste any better than it looked. "Well, thank you for taking time away for us," she offered, because it seemed like this fellow needed it laid on thick. "Maybe you could show us the lab after dinner?" Another serving clank had rolled up to the table, and Agatha tensed, but all it did was jerkily deposit a wineglass at her elbow. She took half a sip, just enough to confirm that the deep red liquid was actually wine, and set it down again. 

Their captor brightened at that idea. "Yes! It will pass the time while the Master of Paris decides whether his lovely daughter is worth more to him than his university."

They stared at him in mutual crogglement.

Eventually Agatha managed, "You're, ah, not trying for all of Paris?"

"Certainly not. I only want vengeance," he assured them. "When those traitorous short-sighted professors who could not _comprehend my genius_ have seen the _true beauty_ of my chromametric mind control system, I might even give it back!"

Colette blinked, then smiled. "That's good to know."

"It is?" Ornthrub looked just as confused now as Agatha felt. "You aren't going to beg me to spare them?"

Colette was fiddling with her wineglass, not catching his eye. "Well, no," she said, and then smoothly dumped the glass over his hands. "But I might talk Papa into letting you live."

"Insolence! _Sieze them!_ " Ornthrub tried to wave his hands in the air, but Colette grabbed them and slammed them into the table. "I SAID SEIZE THEM HAVE YOU ALL GONE BLIND -" In a general spirit of helpfulness, Agatha upended the soup tureen over his head. The table went over, scattering rolls. Ornthrub was still waving his hands in the air as his chair tipped backwards and he landed hard on the floor. His gloves had gone purple from the winestain. His flailing kick caught her in the knee as she jumped back, but Agatha was already grabbing her chair and slamming it on the soup tureen. You could kill someone this way if you hit them hard enough, but mostly it just makes them groggy and disoriented for a few minutes, which should be all they needed to leave him tied up for the guards. 

"Would madam like another glass, orrrrrryhthththggggbb -" The serving clank descended into a series of ticking noises.

"Get their weapons," Colette briskly demanded, and rolled Ornthrub over onto his face. 

It looked like a smaller, less menacing version of the thing that had come through the floor at the Cafe du Chat Bleu. The circular saw blades were gone, and the shears replaced by gripping pincers; there were blades held back along its forearms, and something that looked like an electrostimulator on its third arm. First to shut down the clank. Without Ornthrub's color-coded gloves - and that was really an amazingly stupid idea, it was so easy to disable - it didn't seem inclined to do anything at all, including defend itself when Agatha touched the casing, but for safety's sake she grabbed a peacock-blue napkin from the wreckage and wrapped it around the handle of the prybar she had to find on one of the tables of parts, since Ornthrub had _taken her toolkit_. Well, he'd probably stashed it in the lab. Oooh, they could take apart his lab, he must have some interesting things they could take as spoils - no. Focus. She popped the chestplate off first. There had been no smoke, so she was expecting a battery pile - in fact there were three, located in different spots across the torso, which spoke of either careful redundancy or careless inability to make batteries that kept working. It wasn't important now. She took them all out and set them aside, then went for the arms. Ornthrub had connected the weapons to the arms very well, but he hadn't done as well connecting the arms to the body. 

The second serving clank whirred back to life as she approached, but only to offer her coffee. "Spread your arms and turn yourself off, you need maintenance," she told it, and since she still had the peacock-blue napkin it did as she said. For good measure she smashed its optical receptors as soon as she got the batteries out. They were genuinely nicely made, the finest part of the clank and the most obviously Sparkwork, and it felt very nice to shatter them into multicolored glass pieces. 

By this point Colette had Ornthrub hogtied, glaring at them over a gag made out of napkins. He was trying to rant through it, incoherently. She gave him a gentle slap. "Don't get hysterical, monsieur, I said we'd spare your life. Oh, are you done, chérie?"

Agatha held up two bladed limbs as proof. "Want to raid his lab, or should we just summon the guards?"

"They havn't burst down the door yet, so they must not have found this place." She gives Agatha a beaming smile. "Perhaps you can build a beacon?"

\--

She was expecting the lab to be as disorganized and badly put together as the rest of Ornthrub's plot, but it was actually very nice, except for the clutter of parts. He had an entire rack of all the variously-sized occtipal wrenches, not just a few adjustables, and a very modern copper extruder next to the still-glowing furnace. The electric lights were pure white. There were two half-assembled clanks on slabs, another with gashes in the casing and a broken-off arm that must be waiting for repair, and a setup that looked designed to shine multicolored lights at a person strapped in a chair. Something to do with the chromatic hypnosis he was going on about at dinner. 

What it didn't have, annoyingly, were any obvious doors except the one they came through. 

"Oh, come on," Agatha muttered. "He must keep his army somewhere. He must have an army, right? Nobody tries to take over Paris with five clanks. Two of them were _waiters_."

"Maybe he's better at hiding doors than scheming," Colette offered, and laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. It had been hard to tell the route when they were brought in, with all the lights off, and now that she thinks about it Agatha is sure it was the waiter-clanks that dragged them into the boudoir. But the thing with buzzsaws must have left the lab somehow, and it would be hard-put to have fit through the dining room door. Colette goes on, "The man has to have some talents, or he wouldn't have gotten this far. You've never been kidnapped before, have you?"

"No! Why would anyone have kidnapped me? My father is a blacksmith and my mother teaches piano!"

"Really?" Colette blinks. "No Sparks in the family tree, Miss Clay?"

"Not as far as I know." Which was a little bit misleading, all she knew about her birth parents was what they looked like, but surely Uncle Barry would have mentioned if they were Sparks? It was the sort of thing that stood out. She found herself fingering her locket again, and remembering Uncle Barry, who could fix absolutely anything. Maybe there were family ... tendencies. And certainly Adam and Lilith had been _some_ spark's creation, but that only gave them a Spark in the family in the same metaphorical sense that made them Agatha's parents. Why was Colette asking, anyway? "Do you think there might be?"

"It's certainly possible. You have plenty of mechanical skill." Colette beamed at her. "I don't suppose you could whip up a door-finding device and spare us all the tedious knocking on walls and testing for traps? This isn't the first hostile Spark's lab _I've_ had to loot," she added. "They seem to think I'll lie around _en deshabille_ like a penny-dreadful heroine."

"Urgh. That must be so annoying." Agatha surveyed the tools and bits of clankwork, and did a few quick calculations based on the perimeter size of the lab, and came to a dispiriting conclusion. "He's not set up for sonar. I could build something from scratch, but it would probably take longer than checking by hand."

"Now I know you don't have Spark in the blood," Colette informed her with a grin. "No spark would ever be so sensible. You go left, I'll go right?"

"Good plan," Agatha said, and grabbed a hexagon wrench. 

\--

The first door they found lead to a bedroom with an unmade bed and precarious piles of penny-dreadfuls, the second to a storeroom full of colored glass sheets, but the third opened to a big empty room smelling of machine oil and damp, its only notable feature a green-painted elevator platform big enough for four or five clanks. 

Actually turning it _on_ was another ordeal, involving waving various lenses in front of its obviously-retrofitted control array, and by the time they detoured back to the dining room to pick up Ornthrub, who had wiggled halfway across the room toward, for some reason, one of the disabled waiters, Agatha had to ask: "Can I hit him on the head again or would the Master be annoyed if he turned up with brain damage?"

"You shouldn't," said Colette, but she did look wistful as she hauled him half-upright by the shoulders. "But - hm. Better idea. I'm going to take the gag out so he can tell us where he put our things. If he says anything else, hit him _wherever you like_ . Understand, monsieur?"

Ornthrub nodded frantically. Agatha smirked and hefted the wrench. 

"Intheyellowcabinet," he babbled all at once when the gag was pulled away. "Hungupintheyellowcabinetitsnotlockedortrapped -"  
Colette got the napkin back between his teeth as he babbled. "Can you check, chérie?"

Her bag with the toolkit and books inside, and Colette's leather satchel, were just where he said. Colette had slung Ornthrub over her shoulder like a sack of onions, as easily as if she carried tied-up men out of their secret laboratories every day. She must be stronger than she looked, Agatha thought, and tried not to blush with generalized embarrassment at the misfortune of not being Colette. She made sure to keep the wrench in hand, just in case Ornthrub got any stupid ideas about fighting back. 

The elevator creaked and groaned and moved so slowly it might have been faster to climb the framework, but it moved. Agatha blinked into the darkness as it shuddered to a halt, in a space full of the pinging of rain on a metal roof. As her eyes adjusted Agatha could make out windows set high in the wall, and crates big enough to hide people in. Or more of Ornthrub's army, if he owned this building and wasn't just hoping the absentee landlords never noticed he'd moved into their basement. He must have money; he'd had clank parts. People didn't think often about the economics of attempting world conquest. Or even conquest of Paris.

"It _would_ still be raining," Colette sighed in exasperation. "Well, let's hope the guards are close by." She strode off, taking no care at all to keep Ornthrub from bouncing. It was lucky he hadn't thrown up down her back yet. 

\--

The guards were not close by. It took three blocks to find a streetlamp, which Agatha spent fuming silently at Ornthrub for leaving her coat behind when he kidnapped them and Colette spent fuming aloud. "- can't develop everywhere, Papa says. If there are corners to cut a warehouse district where the owners will pick up the slack is the ideal place, Papa says. Very little of interest happens in Montsouris, Papa says, Well, I think it's plenty interesting that a _lunatic spark_ who was willing to drag us _all the way from the Institut_ has a _lair_ in Montsouris. We'll have to send in the _chats cuvries._ "

Agatha's hair was starting to drip into her eyes; she pushed it aside, "I've never heard of them."

"And with luck, you never will again. Ah, the light of civilization!" Colette stopped in front of a yellow-glowing lamp - sodium arc lamps out here in the empty sections of town, whatever Colette thought, Agatha thought Paris was _amazing_ \- and unceremoniously dumped Ornthrub to the street. He splashed into a puddle, and instantly began to yell through the gag again, but Colette ignored him completely. With a muttered "a- _hah!_ ", she pulled open the pyramidal base of the lamppost. 

Agatha looked inside, trying not to drip. It looked much more complicated than a lamppost needed to be; there was a single massive gear surrounded by toggles that was obviously a timing mechanism, but it was half-hidden behind loops of electrical wire, piston rods extending down into the darkness, a row of green lamps no bigger than her thumbnail, and a flat grey tile on some kind of armature that Agatha couldn't understand at all at a glance. Her fingers itched to take it apart and look at the mechanisms. Colette reached in to touch a little copper switch with a red glass handle, and flicked it up and down three times rapidly. "And that," she said, "is how you get the attention of the Watch, chérie."

"Do all the lampposts do that? They didn't mention it at Customs." Paris was even better than Agatha had thought. 

"We don't tell everyone," Colette explained, and slammed the door shut again. "Can you imagine all the false alarms? No, that little trick is reserved for friends of the family."

"I'm a friend of the family?"

"Companion in adversity, at least." Colette gave her a smile warm enough that it seemed out of place in the near-darkness and sheeting rain. "Although I hope you'll let me treat you to cocoa again to make up for the inconvenience? Once the Chat Bleu re-opens, that is. It might take them a week to get the beams replaced. Ever since that mess with the Teaspoon Maximizer Monsieur Bonavente refuses to use anything but hand tools in the cafe. He's even gone back to gas lighting, which does give the place a certain ambiance, but the quality of light isn't nearly as good. People only go there to drink now, not study."

"I'd think they wouldn't try to study because it was so loud," Agatha said. "At least when we were there. I could barely hear myself think."

"It's much quieter after midnight. But I suppose you prefer to get your peace and quiet at home?"

"My mother worries if I'm out too late." Agatha blushed. Lilith must be frantic by now, and here she was on the wrong side of the city, standing out in the rain, just having escaped from the lair of a madboy out to conquer - well, alright, the university - and not even gotten to loot his lab properly on the way out, and she really needed a new aestometer, too. She should probably be more hysterical about this than elated, but it was hard to be hysterical with Colette so cheerful and competent. "I don't even know the way from here."

"We'll take a cab," Colette assured her, "just as soon as the idiot is safely put away. I hope you don't think he's typical of our - ah. Here they are." 

Sure enough, two women in blue Watch uniforms were rounding the corner, guns at the ready. They slowed down a little as they approached and it became obvious that nothing was on fire.

The taller guard ventured, "Mesdemoiselles, what seems to be the matter?" 

"This is Julius Ornthrub," Colette informed them, and gave him a kick for emphasis. He made a muffled noise of protest. "If anyone was paying attention, you've been looking for him all evening."

"We got the bulletin," the shorter guard said, and crouched down to shine her pocket torch into his face. "Matches the description."

Agatha pointed back into the sodden alleyways. "His headquarters are that way. Can we go somewhere it isn't raining now?"

\--

In the cab Agatha found herself humming again, as she tried to sort things out in her head. Colette didn't interrupt this time.

By Parisian standards, she thought, it had been a small and sordid adventure. They had barely been kept hostage an hour. The Watch were going to be up all night sorting out Ornthrub's lab and making sure all his weapons were disabled, but as a cheerful sergeant had told Agatha when she offered to help, they had a special team trained for exactly that. No need to worry, mademoiselle. But you seem to be good at this sort of thing, there's a club at the University -

What would Lilith say if she wanted to join it? Freelance heroism would be much more strenuous than carrying groceries or ballroom dancing. She'd have to learn to fight. It was about as far from being a respectable young lady as Agatha could imagine.

But she hadn't had a headache in _weeks_.

And here she was, squashed into the back of a taxicab with the daughter of the Master of Paris, pressed against her for warmth as they hurdled through the night. There was something putting out warm air at their feet, but not very much - not enough, in this weather, to get properly warm during the twenty-minute ride to the edge of Belleville. It was a nice cab in most respects, though - cushioned seats, excellent leafsprings, and a five-cylinder steam engine puffing neatly away in front of them, shuddering a little as their driver leaned on the yoke. She hadn't gotten a good look at the steering mechanism; it went through a gearbox mounted just behind the engine and she suspected, from the arrangement of rods, that two pistons were each exclusive to one wheel. A mess, in other words, the sort of system designed by someone more concerned with not breaking gears than with wasting fuel. But easy enough to convert to a conical clutch, if necessary, all it would take was -

"So have you caught the fever, chérie?"

Colette's voice was loud in her ear. Agatha jerked, distracted from her planning. "Fever?" she repeated back like an idiot.

"The urge for adventure. The desire to set right the wrongs of the world and seek out strange new experiences and perhaps cause large explosions along the way." Colette's breath was warm and Agatha was suddenly very aware of the arm thrown over her shoulders. "Very common among Sparks, of course. At least in these modern, enlightened times when turning your neighbors into assorted mollusks is no longer an accepted form of creative expression."

"I. Uh. Maybe. I don't ..."

"Give it some thought. You're clearly not our _ordinary_ kind of student."

Agatha couldn't quite process this, because her brain was stuck on the word _Spark_.

Was she? Was it possible that Colette had noticed before she had? She was mechanically inclined, to be sure, but not really more than Adam, she'd always thought that if nothing else worked out she could take over the shop - which he'd given up without so much as a frown after that strange morning she'd woken up to find a miniature clank on her bedside table. Not even stayed to sell it, just left instructions for their friend Csenge to send the money by the Corbettites. No-one so sensible should be so madcap. 

Girls with the Spark tended to ... just vanish.

And she'd kept building things in her sleep. Sleepwalking, until her parents took to stacking pots in front of her bedroom door - 

"Chérie? Are you alright?"

No wonder a woman with the Spark in her blood thought Agatha was worth cultivating. No wonder she'd kept urging her to build things to help them escape. "I'm fine," Agatha managed. "Just a little headache."

She was grateful, now, that Colette had chivalrously insisted on seeing her home. Colette could spin some perfectly natural explanation for Lilith and Adam, and Agatha could go to bed and think. She was sure she wouldn't get any sleep tonight.

\--

"I can't promise it won't happen again," Colette said to the woman who had introduced herself as Agatha's mother, although a few minutes' observation had convinced Colette, who was already suspicious, it should be prefixed with 'adoptive'. "Paris is full of - adventure. But I can offer Agatha hand-to-hand combat training, if she would be interested."

This was such a deliberately ordinary apartment, it only made her more intrigued. One floor below the garret in a neighborhood full of craftspeople and aspiring merchants, the kind of apartment a young couple would pick out to feel safe and save money at once - or a middle-aged couple with a teenage daughter, who didn't quite trust Paris's reputation of safety. Three weeks had left traces of _lived-in_ around it. Too many jackets on the coat tree, books lying open on the dining table, a crate of tinned meats from Le Gros Poulet with the top missing but the contents not put away. The stungun tucked in a coat pocket was less usual, and that one of the books was open to a map of the more readily accessible parts of the Underground left Colette suspecting that Agatha's parents got _frantic_ in exceedingly practical ways. Which only confirmed her other suspicions. 

"I don't know," Lilith said. "Her health has never been good - she gets these headaches -"

Colette tried to look sympathetic, which was made easier by how bad she really felt for the impossible position she was about to put Lilith in. "Perhaps I could train her myself. I can be gentle. But she was very helpful dealing with tonight's idiot, and news gets about." 

Despite her yawning, Agatha's eyes were bright. "I think it might really be a good idea," she volunteered.

Her parents looked at each other. Adam hadn't spoken a word this whole time, just loomed at the head of the table looking as if he wanted to hit something. Blacksmith, Agatha had said, and he had the muscles of the old-fashioned type who didn't use hoists. Now he seemed more thoughtful; he spread his hand in a little whatever-you-want dear gesture and glanced appraisingly at Colette. He must have liked what he saw, from the softening of his eyes. Lilith was still frowning, fiddling with her glasses in an obvious nervous gesture. 

"If you'd rather work with a professional, chérie, I can recommend some people," Colette assured Agatha, and took a sip of tea to hide her smile.

"No, no, if you're willing -" The blush on Agatha's face put at least one more idea in Colette's mind for putting Agatha very obviously under her aegis, but the girl was only fourteen, for all that Colette was little older, and her parents might be upset by the idea. "I just - I'm clumsy? I might not be able to fight." She gave another yawn.

Lilith's face was a study in maternal reassurance as she ruffled Agatha's hair and smiled at her daughter. "We can talk about it in the morning," she said. "I'm sure our guest will understand."

And that was a blatantly obvious hint, which Colette cheerfully ignores as she raises her teacup and says, "I can finish my tea with your mother's charming company. But I do owe you cocoa. Next week?"

"Yes, absolutely." Agatha pulled the throw rug tighter over her shoulders as she got up, abandoning her tea.

By the time the hall door clicked shut Adam and Lilith had turned identical grim looks on Colette. She smiled at them as she took another sip; it had been an unpleasant evening, but a _very_ educational one. "This is lovely - is it a local blend?"

"What are your intentions toward Agatha?" Lilith answered with no pretense of polite chatter.

Oh, lovely! Protective enough to be frightening, but with a veneer of plausible deniability, just what someone might say who'd heard Colette's other reputation. This entire conversation was a gamble; she might as well raise the stakes. "I intend to cultivate her friendship, since she seems like someone worth knowing. But you should warn her not to hum when she's thinking hard, or everyone will know she has Heterodyne blood."

"What are you talking about?" Lilith demanded, indignant, but her face had gone pale. Check.

"Oh, don't worry, I won't tell anyone. I won't even tell Papa. He's so old-fashioned about his old enemies. But if he'd worked it out, he would have found some excuse to send you all away from Paris." She half-shrugged. "Did you come here hoping the general chaos would hide her Spark? The odds are good." 

There was another one of those long looks between them, full of old-married-couple telepathy. Colette deliberately closed her eyes and gulped her tea, to give them the chance for any private gestures. The rain clattered outside; there was a noise of running water behind the hall door. 

Eventually Lilith said, "We came here because young Sparks without a powerful protector don't last long. We hoped the Master of Paris could be that protector. Whether or not he knew."

"But of course." Colette lifted her cup in a toast. Neither of them had taken more than token sips; their tea must be getting cold. 

The look Adam gave her was as obvious a threat as she'd ever seen without words, but there was no following through on it. The cabdriver had seen Colette go in, she was armed, and she was, as people kept pointing out, the daughter of the Master of Paris. It was cruel of her to lean on the Clays for their secrets, even the ones she'd worked out for herself. 

"I don't wish your daughter any harm," she said, as gently as she could manage. "I could use a friend, and she could use a protector. If anyone hurts her, I can help you track them down and _utterly destroy them_. Can we agree, for now, that we're on the same side?" 

"For now," Lilith answered, reluctance obvious in her voice. 

Colette gulped down the last of her tea. She really should make an exit before their tentative goodwill ran out. "Good. We're only in Nonexplosive Metallurgy together this term, but I can move to her study group. That will at least save her from some tedious boys. For the rest of the chaos, well, we'll have to trust her instincts."

Adam was at least looking calmer. Lilith adjusted her glasses and gave Colette a look she could only think of as _old_. "I hope that works," she said. "I really do."

\--

In the end Agatha had fallen asleep, despite her racing thoughts and the pounding rain on her window, and dreamed of commanding armies of clanks from a flying throne made of teacups. She woke up still in bed, for once, and meandered through getting dressed in a distracted haze. Her parents were still asleep - they never woke up before eight - so Agatha left the teakettle full and a note on the slate, pulled on a cardigan and her spring raincoat, and headed for the patisserie next to the Poetry Labs that people kept telling her to try the croissants from. 

Of course, being next to the Poetry Labs meant it was near the Metachemistry Building, and it should not have been any kind of surprise that Colette was already there, and waving Agatha over to her table.

The room grew quieter as walked over, then erupted again in a flurry of raised voices. Agatha thought she could catch a few phrases - "came straight through the floor!", "underground room as big as Mirepoix Hall", " - ate Miss Clay like an -", "he was taking the building to Madrid!", "covered in chocolate sauce". She did her best to ignore them. Rumours were only to be expected, after so many people saw their abrupt departure from the Chat Bleu last night. She took her seat with as much stern dignity as she could muster.

Colette pushed a plate with an untouched crepe toward her. "You look hungry, chérie. Here, get an early start."

She would have protested, but Agatha realized with a start that she was hungry, absurdly hungry. "Thanks," she managed, and went for the fork while Colette smiled indulgently. "Er. Do you come here often?"

For some reason the question made Colette snicker. "Only two or three times a week. The croissants are divine and the gossip is hilarious. I mean, you'd think it would obvious I did not die from last night's little adventure, but so far three people have accused Ornthrub of my murder. Since I arrived."

Agatha let her head drop to the table, with a moan. "Who do they think handed him over to the Watch?"

"Rumour didn't specify. Someone thought he was secretly working for Baron Wulfenbach, who ordered him to surrender to prevent a diplomatic incident. The other theory is that this was all an elaborate scheme for the two of us to elope to Londinium."

That would have made her blush, except it was so unbearably stupid it only made her groan. 

"Get up, chérie," Colette told her, and nudged her head. "Such is the price of fame."

"Fame? People are going to keep talking about me?" This was a good crepe, warm and fluffy and with just the right drizzle of honey, and it would be a waste of food to bury her face in it and flee. Agatha settled for eating quickly, head held close over her plate.

"Well, they will if you keep being so adventuresome. And heroic." Colette had on her beaming smile again, the one that blazed away objections in a torrent of eagerness to please her. No wonder so many boys followed her around like puppies. Or ducklings, Agatha thought, imprinting on what they wanted to someday be, except they'd never match Colette's poise. "Have you given any more thought to making a habit of it?"

The thing was -

The thing that Agatha had expected to keep her up last night was worry. How horrified her parents would be, if anything happened to her, and how likely it was that something would happen - anything on the spectrum of horrors from broken bones to getting eaten by a giant mucosapien guard slime - if she took up adventuring. The headaches that had dogged her for almost nine years now, clanging against her skull like a sledgehammer whenever she tried to think too intensely, no matter how _important_ it was that she think _right now_. All the books she's read over three or four times, trying to let them sink into her mind without concentrating; all the shopping half put away and mending half finished and little devices half built, the flotsam of a life half beaten back. Until three weeks ago. All the things that could have gone wrong last night, and didn't, and how easy and satisfying it had been to take apart Ornthrub's clanks, and how she had gone home feeling nothing but cold and tired and woken up feeling - just fine. She found herself fiddling with her locket, the familiar trilobite pattern smooth under her fingers. Lilith had always told Agatha not to go looking for trouble.

But if Agatha was a Spark, the trouble would come to her. 

She let the locket drop and reached for Colette's outstretched hand. "I think I'd like to try."

\--


End file.
